1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a mechanism for processing positioning signals such as those received from the Global Positioning System (GPS).
2. Art Background
The global positioning system (GPS) has become extremely popular for a number of applications. GPS receivers are now incorporated into a variety of systems including consumer electronic systems in which the location information or time information provided by GPS supplements the other information provided by the system. Thus, more and more industries are realizing the advantages that GPS can provide.
Typically, when a customer, such as an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) develops a particular application of GPS, the GPS manufacturer generates the application code in accordance with the customer's specification. The GPS manufacturer designs and codes the user application of GPS, as the processing performed by the GPS receiver has strict timing and processing requirements that cannot be disturbed by other processing such as the user application processing. Unless carefully written, the execution of customer code can conflict with the GPS processing code. In addition, there is the danger of the user code overriding sections of memory containing the GPS processing code or GPS data used in processing. Thus, the GPS manufacturer cognizant of these restrictions carefully develops the user application code for a particular customer. This is a time consuming and costly process. It is therefore desirable to develop a system that insulates the GPS processing portion and data from the user application portion such that the user application portion has access to the positioning data generated by the GPS processing portion without the concern that the user application portion will corrupt the GPS processing portion and data of the receiver.